1) They have a ton of integrity.
Scientists have as much (or as little) integrity as the next guy. Fortunately the scientific method yields tools for outing the ones who acted with little integrity. Unfortunately, scientists with little integrity tend to move the discussion into into politics before the integrity problem can catch up with them, after which science kinda goes out the window.
Manning stands accused of the latter. Some of his emails focused on how to discredit folks who dispute his findings suggest those accusations have some merit. If you want to keep politics out of science, you simply can't engage on a political level.
2) They're succeed by finding new things and changing the established thinking.
No. Just no. Finding a new way to confirm an old theory is just as successful science as testing a new theory. Finding a way to refute an established theory is highly successful science which rarely happens, and finding the new theory that fits all the data -and- whose predictions survive the test of time is rare genius.
Test of time is important. If you have to incrementally revise the theory as new data comes in, it's not a very solid theory.
3) They use the peer review system to enforce rigorous standards.
A theory which, sadly, has been discredited in the past decade or so.
http://science.slashdot.org/st...
http://science.slashdot.org/st...